Thursday, September 9, 2010

Dinosaurs and scary movies

When I was young, my parents were pretty strict on what I could watch. I wasn't allowed to see the evening news until I started grade school. So it was a very long time (at least when compared to most kids) before I saw any kind of movie that was remotely violent.

My friend Phillip had gotten the movie Jurassic Park on tape and, probably knowing the scariest movie I had seen was Ernest Scared Stupid, put it in the VCR, saying something along the lines that it was an awesome movie.

Now don't get me wrong. Jurassic Park is an awesome movie.

I don't know how I got through the first scene, but I do remember the part where the T-Rex tries to eat the kids in the jeep. Phillip's mom spots me trying to claw my way backwards inside her armchair, eyes wide open, and decides that the movie was too much for me.

Phillip protested and said that I didn't mind. Did I?

No words came out. Just a slow shake of the head. "No? What? I don't care. Oh my God. That dinosaur was going to eat those kids. They were screaming. I will never curse dinosaurs again."

Now, of course, I'm the one watching the movies with the jump scenes and my wife is repeatedly asking me, through a wad of fingers, when the next scary part was going to come up. And my sister blows through scary movies like nothing. It took me years to build up an immunity. But while I was watching "The Mummy" for the first time in our living room at age 13, she was six.